Ehrlich and Holdren: Death “Reasonable Price to Pay” for Well-being of Society

In a 1995 article written by Gretchen Daily and Ecoscience co-author Paul R. Ehrlich, the authors put forward the proposition that physicians should no longer concentrate on improving the health of their individual patients, or treat occurring infections in order to save the patients life, but rather look to the well-being of society as a whole. In doing so, say Daily and Ehrlich, “a small net increase in deaths” is “a reasonable price to pay”. Here’s the quote in its entirety (page 25):

“Physicians by instinct and training focus on the health of individuals; they must learn to pay more attention to the health of whole societies and to deal with the difficult conflicts of interest that often arise between the two. One physician, Jeffrey Fisher (1994), recommends that physicians be required to take periodic recertification exams in which they are tested on antibiotic knowledge. If antibiotics had been used more judiciously over the past few decades, there doubtless would have been more deaths from bacterial infections misdiagnosed as viral, and fewer deaths from allergic reactions to antibiotics. But a small net increase in deaths would probably have been a reasonable price to pay to avoid the present situation, which portends a return to the pre-antibiotic era and much higher death rates.”

The fact that humans reproduce, Daily and Ehrlich argue, means diseases have an opportunity to thrive and reek havoc amongst them. This is the snake biting its own tail. Less humans means less diseases. The logic is infallible. The same argument can of course be applied to car accidents, plane crashes and other calamities, sure to occur with those darned humans roaming about. In order to reduce the possibility of diseases occurring, the authors list some proposals, including:

“1. Redoubling efforts to halt the growth of the human population and eventually reduce it (Daily et al., 1994). This is a very basic step, because overpopulation makes substantial, diverse contributions to the degradation of the epidemiological environment, in addition to degrading other aspects of Earth’s carrying capacity (Daily and Ehrlich, 1992).”